meschaefer's 225g inwall

[meschaefer]

I contacted Marc at Marco Rocks, regarding the tonga shelf that had been damaged in shipping. He got back to me within a few hours and is going to send me out some replacement pieces ASAP at no cost to me. That's what I call service.

He also told me that I can drill a hole on each side of the broken pieces and insert a piece of acrylic rod. A little bit of epoxy and some rubble over the crack, and it will look as good as new.

 

[erics3000]

Thats great service. The big cherry picked shelf pieces are not cheap.

 

[meschaefer]

I just got a tracking number for the replacement Tonga shelf pieces. The package weighs 13lbs (the original 25lb box shipped to me weighed 27 lbs.)

Very exciting, and I am going to try and "repair" the rock that broke during shipping. Once it is delivered I will post some pics of the replacement pieces.

 

[meschaefer]

A couple of weeks back, I picked up a 120 gallon tank from on of they guys on Manhattan Reefsfor a really good price. (FREE - Thanks Rich!!) It is a standard size 120 gallon made by Glass Cages with Starphire on the front. I am going to use it as a sump.

He was going to throw it out, as it has a small crack in the lower right front corner (you can see it to the right of the beer bottle). It was there for 6 months before he took the tank down, before I saw it I was gong to patch it, but after looking at I am going to leave it alone. The eurobracing is also cracked on one side as well, witch I will patch up (I did this when moving the tank, I had an incident with a deflated tire on the dolly I moved it with).

The tank was reef ready, so I had to remove the center overflow. It took me over an hour to get the overflow out. There was a learning curve involved and think I could get it out allot faster if I had to do it again. This leaves me with two holes in the bottom of the tank, witch will get a patch over it as well.

The big question is... how do I want to partition it up? I will be running an external skimmer, and need to drill one side to go to my return pump (reeflo dart). I will have two overflow coming into the sump and I need space for my heaters, probes, phosban reactor. etc etc/. I also want to have enough space in the area just before the return pump that I can easily drain out 50 gallons for a water change without having to turn off the return pump. Any ideas?

 

[erics3000]

I have seen guys just get cut glass and silicone them in. I wanted to try and see if I can seal some acrylic on to glass. Glass cages sells cut glass to make sumps out of tanks.

 

[meschaefer]

My understanding is that you can not seal acrylic onto glass, at lest not with silicone. The Silicone doesn't stick to the acrylic, so a little bit of pressure and it will pop right out. There is a a glass place down the street from me, and once I figure out exactly what i need I will just have them cut the pieces for me.

As i said the big question is.... how do I want to lay out the design. I know there are allot of options, and in the past i have gone with a simple set of baffles, and a spot for a refugium. I am not sure I am going to use a refugium on this tank, and if I do it will be in a seperate 55 gallon tank.

 

[meschaefer]

One of the ideas that has been suggested to me on my local site, is that I may want to incorporate Filter Sock racks in my sump, so that filter socks can be easily removed and cleaned from the overflow drains. I am looking for some pics of how that would work, any help would be appreciated.

Anyway, I was supposed to move the tank tonight but I couldn't get firm commitments on help and I was feeling a little rushed. Accordingly, it will not be until the first weekend in October till it is in place. Although I would love to have the tank in place, it was just not meant to be...yet anyway.

This will give me some time to finish everything else off, so that I can get the whole thing up an running. Even if I had picked it up tonight, I still need to finish the stand and sump, the lights, and figure out all my plumbing. Hopefully I can get all this done in the next two weeks.

 

[erics3000]

I heard the same thing about acrylic and glass, that why I was shocked whne I say that thread. If I can t find any glass I still mat try it.

I am sure you have already been to marcs site about sumps, wright?I was going to use socks adn then change my mind and am going to build a rack to put some filter floss on it. Cleaning socks is a pain in the butt

I have a 55 that I ma going to use as a fuge also.

It took me a couple time to get everyone together to get my tank up in the wall. Whne everyone was available I jumped at it. I just wish I had a little more time to finish everything above the tank. I put some flush canon lights above the tank and a bunch of crap fell in. I iwll clean it whne all my electrical is done. SO hopefully you have everyhting worked out above the tank.

 

[meschaefer]

When I received my Tonga Shelf rock from Marco Rocks a couple of pieces had broke during shipping, I contacted Marc and he sent me the following piece as a replacement. The package weighed 13 lbs, so I figure the piece has to weigh 11 - 12 lbs (my original order was for 25lbs of Tonga shelf). It is the nicest piece of rock i got in my two orders. As you can see it is sort of shaped like a mushroom, with short stem and a wide cap.

Once again a beer bottle for size reference.

 

[meschaefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10823879#post10823879 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by erics3000


It took me a couple time to get everyone together to get my tank up in the wall. Whne everyone was available I jumped at it. I just wish I had a little more time to finish everything above the tank. I put some flush canon lights above the tank and a bunch of crap fell in. I iwll clean it whne all my electrical is done. SO hopefully you have everyhting worked out above the tank.

The hard part here, is I have to get everybody together agains for a secons move. They all had fun moving it the first time, and I figure moving is a second time is not high up on their list. It does look like I am good to go the Saturday after next. You are right, I will get a chance to finish some stuff before it goes int. I am just getting impatient.

 

[meschaefer]

In terms of lighting, I am planning on using 3 250W MH supplemented by 4 39w T5s.

The MH will be run by Bluewave HQI ballasts that will overdrive single ended bulbs which will be mounted in lumeanarc reflectors. I have not completely settled on a bulb, but I am looking for something that will give me good par, which means for the most part 10K bulbs. Each MH will run for about 6 hours each. I would actually prefer a "bluer" bulb than a 10k, but there is such a drop off in par readings when you move beyond a 10K bulb.

The T5 will supplement the MH and will run for 12 hours. I am looking at the T5 retrofits from sunlight supply, with icecap ballasts and TEK reflectors.

When it comes to T5 bulbs, as with the MH I have not settled on bulbs. Although they will have the responsibility of supplementing the MH bulbs, there will be a couple of hours a day where they are the main source of viewing light. If my prior tank is any indicator, I will probably look at the tank more with just the T5 than with the MH on. This means that I need them to be somewhat "blue" to compensate for the 10K MH, but I don't want them to be so blue that they are not pleasing to the eye when I look at the tank with just the t5s on.

 

[jayybird]

Hey Matt, I'm glad to see my old tank again and that it's going to good use good luck with the build. Jay

 

[meschaefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10834462#post10834462 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jayybird
Hey Matt, I'm glad to see my old tank again and that it's going to good use good luck with the build. Jay

Reno Nevada? I thought you where going to California.

The tank hasn't gotten much use yet, it is still sitting in my buddies garage. But soon.....it will rise again!

 

[meschaefer]

I am still throwing around ideas for my sump. As said one of my local guys, is a big fan of filter socks, and he doesnt use any baffles. I used filter socks on my 65 and they where great at getting rid of the microbubbles. But in my mind it sort of kills the whole idea of keeping things suspended in the water colum so that they can be removed by the skimmer. I think I would rather use baffles than filter socks, if the baffles don't work i could very easily add teh socks, but adding baffles is a pain in the ***.

The one thing that "no baffles" does have in its favor, is that the sump would be a single compartment. I would like to be able to drain my water changes out of the last compartment of the sump, without having to turn off the return pump. If I put in baffles, I can only get about 35 gallons out of the sump for a water change, without baffles i could easily pull 80 gallons out.

 

[meschaefer]

VHO vs T5

Someone suggested that I look into VHO to supplment my MH instead of T5. Not being very familiar with VHO, I have been taking a further look into them.

The first thing I notice is that they have a much higher output then an equivalent length of T5. Is there an efficiency issue with going with VHO as opposed to T5.

I also notice that the ice cap retrofit kits don't come with reflectors, as the bulbs have internal reflectors...do all VHO bulbs have internal reflectors?

I can get a 2 x 160w VHO with URI bulbs and a icecap ballast for $225, or 4 x 39w T5 with bulbs, Tek Reflectors, and an icecap ballast for $284. It seems that the VHO is cheaper up front, and the bulbs are less expensive to replace. What about other onging costs. I.e. do I need 320W of VHO?

 

[jknecht]

I had the same issue with my sump. The last compartment has a drain but I was only able to get out about 20 gallons of water so I added a direct around the baffles. It works great. I never turn off the pump when I'm doing a water change. I attached a pic.

 

[meschaefer]

That's funny, I was just looking at your sump plumbing either last night or this morning.

Are you are draining the water from the center of the "redirect", or do you have another drain.? If you are draining water from the "redirect", how does that stop your return pump from running dry?

 

[jknecht]

I drain the water from the right end. There is a ball valve on the other side of the pump; it's hard to see in the pic. It's connected start to a drain. I put the drain in the center of the redirect just in case I ever thought a use (I had PVC laying around)

 

[meschaefer]

While looking into the various ways I could set up my sump, I started thinking a little more about plumbing my system together.

The water will drain from two external overflows into my sump, with a "T" in in one of the drains so that I can gravity feed my skimmer. From the sump the water will be returned to the tank via a Sequence Refflo Dart. The water coming from the dart has to go to a manifold so that I can spread the flow out. Water not only needs to return to the display tank, but I would also like to feed my Phosban Reactor from it and eventually a chiller and a fuge/frag tank . These will be added within the next year, so i want to figure them into the whole design from the get go. Here is a plumbing diagram, that I created to help me think about the whole thing.

Obviously, the most critical link in the whole chain will be the manifold. It needs to be able to spread the flow from the Dart out to five different lines, and I will probably add a sixth just for good measure. Each one will have a ball valve on its output

I honestly, don't even know where to start. I think that the Dart has a 1.5 inch output leading into the manifold. The outputs will need to be varying sizes. 3/4 inch for the phosban, and I think one inch for everything else. Is is as simple as connecting a five or six PVC "t"s to each other.

Any ideas, pics or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[meschaefer]

One of the things I have been thinking about in terms of my lighting is using it more efficiently. In the past I ran my MH (2 x 175 over a 65g and a 75g) almost 10 hours a day. I think that this may have been overkill, especially over the 65g, and wasteful as I have noticed that many people are running them only 6 hours a day. I would like to start by only running the MH six hours a day. This leave me with the need for another light source to illuminate the tank for the other six hours.

I would consider adding a 4th MH to the system. I would then need to run MH for the entire day, as they would be the only source of light. I am worried about getting an even spread over a six foot tank, without having to run 3 -4 MH all the time. If I ran only two MH, I don't think that the spread would be even and the tank may look strange. Add in the fact that running two MH during the "supplmental" period, is running 500w an hour as opposed to 320w for 2x VHO or 156 for 2 x T5 (I am worried less about the money, as opposed to being efficient in terms of my electricity use so I am willing to lay out more money for more efficient use of light even if I never recoup the upfront cost..think carbon footprint it makes my wife happy).

If I go T5 or VHO, they will be mounted in front of, and behind the Lumnearc Reflectors. Because of the size of the reflector the lamps will be pretty close to the front and the back. As Pierce mentioned, T5 have a much more efficient reflector, which I believe translates into a tighter spread. So with T5 I am somewhat concerned with their ability to create an even spread across the width of the tank. Especially if I mixed bulbs to achieve a "better" color.

This also poses the question, do I need to run the supplmental lighting during the six hour burn of the MH. This comes down to two issues, one do the corals need that extra light and two does the color of my MH bulb just look plain ugly. I have looked at the 14k bulbs, but am concerned that they don't put out as much PAR as the 10K bulbs. Although I wouldn't need the supplemental lighting for the look, I may need to run it during the MH burn for the extra PAR, which would negate the reason for using a higher K bulb in the first place - to get the look I want without having to supplement.